JOHN Lennon’s imprisoned killer says he still gets letters about the pain he has caused.

Mark David Chapman was denied release during his eighth appearance before a parole board last week.

New York state corrections officials on Wednesday released the transcript from the hearing at the Wende Correctional Facility.

Chapman, 59, told the parole board he’s sorry for “being such an idiot” and seeking notoriety the way he did.

Killed outside his home ... John Lennon with son Julian and Yoko Ono in 1968.Source:Supplied

Chapman fired five shots on December 8, 1980, outside the Dakota apartment house where Lennon lived on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, striking the ex-Beatle four times.

Chapman was sentenced in 1981 to 20 years to life in prison after pleading guilty to second-degree murder. He will be eligible again for parole in two years.

Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono has opposed Chapman’s parole in the past, telling the board it would make her and Lennon’s two sons afraid and possibly put Chapmans’s own life in peril, at the hands of Lennon’s fans, the New York Daily News reported.

Lennon tribute ... fans memorialised their hero at the ‘Imagine’ mosaic in the Strawberry Fields section of New York's Central Park on the 25th anniversary of his death. Picture: Mary AltafferSource:AP

In the interview, Chapman says he sold a valuable work by American artist Norman Rockwell to fund his travels between his home with his wife in Hawaii and New York City. “I was supposed to give the money to ... my father-in-law, and I didn’t do it,” he admits. “I took that money and used that for the airfare and hotels and things like that.”

When he returned to New York, he told his wife it was to write a children’s book. “I was very convincing,” he says. “It was a serious, well thought out crime.”

His wife remains in Hawaii and the couple just celebrated their 35th wedding anniversary. “I can’t believe she stuck by me all these years but she has,” he says, crediting their Christian faith for keeping them together.

Chapman says the letters he has received in prison made it clear to him the wide-ranging fallout of his crime. “This wasn’t just done to a wife or family,” he says. “It was done to a lot of other people, and they still have pain ... He was a great and talented man and they are still hurting.”